secretsauce's blog

Yemen - When her husband left her alone with four children, Amina decided to leave her home country of Nigeria to seek a better life for her family. Unfortunately, Amina and her children fell victim to one of the smuggling networks that operates between the Horn of Africa and the Arabian Gulf. They were held captive for three months by a gang who tried to extort money from Amina’s family. Eventually, after a dramatic rescue, Amina and her children were referred to IOM Yemen’s Migrant Assistance and Protection team.

Nepal - “I was at home massaging my 4-old-month baby when the first earthquake hit. I remember the day quite vaguely. I remember that the wall of my house started to collapse and next thing I know I was on a bamboo stretcher and I can hear my baby was crying so hard. My husband told me that he had me and my baby rescued from the house and immediately built a makeshift stretcher then took us to the hospital on foot. It took us 5 hours to get to the closest hospital which is Dhulikhel hospital,” said Bimala Majhi, a 22-year-old mother of two daughters.

An international report on media and the global migration and refugee crisis, issued to coincide with International Migrants Day on December 18th, says journalists often fail to tell the full story and routinely fall into propaganda traps laid by politicians. The report, Moving Stories, is published by the Ethical Journalism Network and reviews media coverage of migration in the European Union and in 14 countries across the globe.

“It’s really hard to leave my family behind, but I’m doing this for my baby,” Nour (27) says as she holds her 5-month-old baby boy, Nathalio in her lap. Her husband, Shadi, holds her hand. They are making the journey of a lifetime – 9,380 kilometers and 7 time zones from Aleppo to be exact. The young family is amongst the lucky ones who have been selected for resettlement in Canada. Having lived in Beirut for eight months, a church in Edmonton has sponsored their resettlement and a chance at a new life.

The year 2014 saw four major emergencies that required simultaneous system-wide responses – in Syria, Iraq, South Sudan and the Central African Republic – followed by the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa. The humanitarian sector has been stretched beyond the limits of its capacity and there are calls for system-wide reform.